


Parallels

by krasati



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Green Arrow (Comics), Green Arrow - All Media Types
Genre: Arrow fam being surprisingly functional, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, Gen, Just me writing shit after that Green Arrow chapter, Kind of canon-compliant, Kinda plotty, Rape/Non-con Elements, Will edit generally as the work nears complete, but it’s more on the characters, warnings because of jason's and mia's past
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-03-20 19:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13724643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krasati/pseuds/krasati
Summary: Mia’s making enough regrets of her own when the Red Hood showed up again in Star City, escalating what seemed to be a straightforward missing person case.Aftermath of Green Arrow: 69-72





	1. Point

Oliver’s out on a date with Dinah somewhere in China, leaving Star City to Mia. Ok, Mia _and_ Connor - but Mia was sick of Connor’s motherhenning so she had been patrolling alone these days. Oliver wouldn’t be pleased about it but fuck that - Speedy’s got work to do and people to save. Especially if the tip she got from Maisie was true, that kids were disappearing. Specifically, kids whose mothers were actively hooking. These kids were sometimes taken care by nicer neighbours, though most roamed on their own. Disappearing acts were not unheard of, and one could even argue that it was common. Right now the rate had yet to be anything abnormal to the police, but Maisie swore that something was off, that hers wouldn’t run, not Annie.

It’s likely there wasn’t a conspiracy to steal illegitimate children - rather, Annie ran away. Missing cases were never easy. Oliver had warned her not to promise anything to victims’ families as false hope was the worst torture.

She was a fucking idiot.

_What if Annie is dead, or worse, untraceable. What are you gonna tell Maisie then._

Annie’s last known location was an abandoned storage that functioned as a youth skatepark in the afternoons. By midnight, the kids should have cleared out. Mia could get the more errant ones to go home if they were here, but the steps she heard above were too heavy to belong to mere children. Utility boots with heavy base, or someone much bulkier than the average teenager. She tensed her shoulders and prepared her bow. The footsteps above had quietened.

“Thought today’s a school night. Queen let you out?”

On instinct she twisted her body to aim the arrow behind her. The stranger, a block of black in the dim, ignored it and stepped closer. Mia’s eyes widened for a second before she switched to a glare.

“ _You_ ,” she snarled.

“Evening,” Red Hood waved, “none of your daddies taught you manners?”

“You kidnapped me,”

“As if that’s the worst thing that has ever happened to you,” he drawled. Mia reminded herself that Red Hood was perfectly capable with psychological warfare and had no qualms using it. She took a deep, calming breath before asking, “What are you doing here?”

“Just passing through. What are you doing? I could help.”

“No. Back off.”

“Your loss,” he shrugged. The arrow pointed in his face had not frightened him throughout the entire confrontation. He sauntered off as casually as he arrived and Mia could not help the uneasy feeling in her guts.

* * *

“You are an idiot. Do you not value your life? I swear to god Mia if you pull this shit again I’m letting Oliver find out.”

Connor did not mince words when he’s pissed. She had dealt with too many angry, angrier people in her life, but this was from someone who she cared about and it kinda still hurt.

“Like you haven’t? And for fuck’s sake it’s standard patrol and I am here in one piece. Nothing fucking happened!” Mia shouted.

“You muted your comms Mia! And you are hiding something!”

“I’m not!”

“You are!”

“Children, knock it off,” Roy appeared out of nowhere, an arm bracing each, “Connor, she’s safe so you can stop being an uptight bitch,”

Connor opened his mouth to protest while Mia smirked. Then Roy glared at her, “That was irresponsible and you made us worry. You may be going through a rebellious phase but you really want to put your life on the line for this? You said you would prove to us that you have grown up!”

“I have not been a child for a long time,” she snapped, shoving his arm off and storming back to her room.

* * *

“I can’t believe you sought me out,” Red Hood said, without a hint of surprise in the modulated voice through his helmet.

“Why were you speaking to Maisie?” When Mia got the text through the secured phone in the middle of school she might have freaked out. Rushing out of school to grab her costume then spending the whole afternoon tracking Red Hood down was a rollercoaster ride from start to end, but actually managing to secure his location on her own was a small victory she was going to take.

Red Hood was never one to give in easy. “I didn’t know she is only allowed to speak to you,”

Mia hissed, “Answer the question or I will release this arrow,”

“You are overstating how much of a threat you are,”

Then it clicked.

“It’s about the missing children, isn’t it?”

Red Hood, being an obnoxious shit, waved dramatically, “Give the girl a prize,”

“That’s _our_ case,”

“From what I heard you lot isn’t crazy territorial like _my erstwhile mentor_ , and I know that only you are on the case, since Black Canary and Green Arrow are out on an extended date and the other Green Arrow and Arsenal don’t seem to be doing anything but arguing with you,”

 _Erstwhile_. What a pretentious asshole.

Then Mia’s eyes widened, “You put a listening device on me?”

“Anyway, they are right, and this case is now my case, so-“

Mia released the arrow, aimed straight at his face. As he dodged it the arrowhead exploded into a dark web that caught his helmet, while Mia swept his legs and pinned him to the ground.

“I suggest you don’t move, or the next arrow is gonna be the real deal,”

“You aren’t going to kill me,” Red Hood replied calmly, even with black webbing covering his helmet and an arrow pointed at his head. Mia wondered if there’s a heat sensor in his helmet.

“Yes, but even if you disarm me now, Arsenal and Green Arrow will be immediately notified of your existence and whatever case you are on is as good as gone,”

He snorted.

“Like hell you stand a chance,” She sneered.

“I heard they are really hot,” Red Hood said wistfully instead, and she pressed the arrowhead into his shoulder. Another inch and it would draw blood.

He did not flinch, “What’s my other option?”

“You let me in this case, we find Maisie’s kid together,”

“Why?” Red Hood leaned in, intrigued and unbothered by the arrow pressing right at his shoulder.

“I made a promise and I intend to keep it.” To Maisie, to Annie, and Oliver. She’s not going to let Red Hood wreck Star City in his rampage. Sure Connor and Roy could stop him, but the gutter side of the city, where she came from, was going to bear the first shock. Red Hood had plans that involved things other than Star City, and knew that the only way to prevent any further intervention was for Speedy to be roped in. The only way for him to cooperate and divulge information was for that to happen.

Maybe she was biting off more than she could chew. But she needed this. Stupid pride or something uglier within her - she was going to see this through.

* * *

 

“As you know, I put down scums in Gotham,” Red Hood began. Mia had heard extensively about that topic from Oliver. A lot more bloodshed and death, she remembered. 

“There’s this one gang that managed to escape when I was... cleaning house, and when I tracked them down, they were in Star City,”

“You think they are branching out here?”

“Along with stealing drugs, abducting children who nobody cares about is their modus operandi - I have been asking around the streets, and Maisie’s story raised the flag,”

Mia frowned, “We haven’t heard any shifts in the drug trade-“

“That’s because Brick is still reigning it tight. They are laying low on the drugs but making the move on the kids,”

She paused, “They moved only because they know you are chasing them." 

Red Hood shrugged, "It doesn't matter. They will keep running and terrorising the streets if we rid them at their roots.

“And," he warned, "We have a time limit. If they managed to ship them to the international black market we may never get them back,”

Maisie. The long list of missing children that nobody seems interested in finding. “You know where they are?”

“I have a lead.” They had stopped on a roof in the South End. Mia followed the noise to a commotion in the alleys and using a binoculars, she spotted a hulking figure in bizarre brick skin and a white hoodie.

“We ambushing Brick right now?”

Red Hood diverted instead, “Do you have trackers on you?”

“Nah, only Batman’s that paranoid,”

“But your brothers are gonna be worried,” he pointed out.

“Sent them a message before I came to find you,” the message had been terse and brisk and not wholly truthful. Out of curiosity she asked, “Have you met them previously?”

“I dabbled a bit with the Titans a long time ago,” Red Hood paused as he removed a gun from his thigh holster, “time to move Speedy,”

* * *

It took a bit of manoeuvring but between five trick arrows, bullets and Red Hood’s taunts, the two of them managed to nail a small scale detonatable rocket in his arm.

“I can’t believe you fell for this. Again.”

Mia shot Red Hood a curious glance.

Brick, finally deciding to cooperate, sighed, “What do you want,”

“Information. What do you know about the Singchap gang?”

Mia’s eyes narrowed. It was the first time she was hearing a name as Red Hood had decided to go straight to the chase without briefing her about what he had found. Smart to make himself indispensable or Mia would have backstabbed him.

“Sing... chap?” Brick cocked his head.

Red Hood groaned, “Not sure if they changed their name but they are headed by Norman Singchap? Norman? He may have also gone by the name Redcap?”

“Oh,” Brick’s eyes widened with recognition, “the Redcaps. They tried to steal some of my merch, but I cracked one of their men’s head and they stopped,”

“Redcap?” Mia repeated and cackled.

Red Hood glared at her before he continued interrogating, “When did you last hear them?”

“Well, what are you offering?” Brick grinned, because old habits die hard and he was a businessman first, albeit one of crime.

“I know you think they aren’t a threat, but they can be pretty wily and get really nasty. I deal with them permanently now, you don’t have them as a problem in the future,”

“Who says I can’t handle them myself?”

“Not that you can’t, but from one crime lord to another, a nuisance is still a nuisance, and you are having issues with controlling the city after that wreckage - trust me that you don’t want _me_ to be one of those nuisances when I can’t get my hands on _fucking_ Redcap,”

“Fair enough,” Brick conceded after a moment of silence, “you have a deal,”

* * *

According to Brick, the Redcaps were using an old industrial block in The Glades as their main hideout.

“Fucking warehouses,” Mia grumbled.

“If you don’t want to deal with this you can always just go home,”

“I’m not complaining about that,” Mia defended, “the whole thing just smells like a trap - place is too dead for someone whose operations run at night,”

“Hmm.”

They slipped in through the windows on the second floor.

“Grab the kids and find the scumbags,” Red Hood instructed. They had agreed in the recon that he was to clear the first floor while she cleared the third and last floors.

Mia tried to ignore the grating irritation at being ordered around as she pointed out, “We need to find proof too, so that the prosecutors can make a solid case,”

She could almost hear his eyes rolling behind the helmet.

She grabbed the sleeve of his jacket, “We are not killing anyone,”

He shrugged her off, “Get on with the work Speedy,”

Mia let go of his sleeve, fuming as she made her way to the top floor. The warehouse was quiet. Too quiet. The Redcaps must have left. At least it was in a hurry, judging by the general negligence in covering their tracks. Mia could still find incriminating records of several key shipment dates and names in these files. She swiped them hurriedly into a bag to examine later.

“Dea-Speedy,” her comms sprung to life. It was Red Hood - his real voice, without the modulator. And he sounded strange.

“There’s a hidden entrance on the first level - behind the green shelves that leads to the basement. The coast is clear. Come down. _Now_.”

* * *

The basement was lined with beds. They were empty, all except for the one in the farthest corner of the room, which Red Hood knelt next to.

The girl was dead, her throat slit and blood fresh and red against whatever that was unstained of her sheets and her sleeping gown and _oh god_ -

Mia fell to her knees.

“It’s a message,” Red Hood had forgotten to switch off the comms, and he sounded dazed with the slight tremble in his voice, “they had been warned,”

Mia continued to freeze, eyes not leaving the pallor of the child’s skin.

His voice took a flinty edge then, “I’m going to _end_ him,”

With that Red Hood let go of the child’s hand and walked away, his steps silent and sure.

By the time Mia could muster the strength to shout a weak “Wait”, Red Hood had disappeared.

Her shaking hands reached to switch her comms to the main channel.

“...Speedy?” Connor asked carefully, though the wary could not mask the relief in his voice.

“I need help.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might have gotten a bit annoyed with some parts of the comics - and dc killed Mia so I am keeping her alive here
> 
> This was in my draft for awhile, but it’s the first time I’m writing something... longer than usual. Leave comments please I am thirsting for feedback <3


	2. Ready

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mia has a plan.

The plan was straightforward: get Roy to deal with Red Hood, while she, together with Connor, scour the place and figure out where the children were at.

Except the warehouse was set to blow, a fact both of them had failed to notice in the midst of things.

She had barely made it out. Smoke burned against her skin - she could melt from the heat of it, dizzy from her wrought senses. Her ears rang and she grappled with the sensory overload, gripping onto her bow as an anchor, her steps swaying with each trudge away from the wreckage. And god, the girl-

When someone grabbed her shoulders she wrestled out of the hold with a desperation she hadn’t had in awhile and lunged with the arrow in her hand.

“Mia!” Hands cupped her cheek, “It’s me, Connor!”

She blinked. Connor’s green eyes stared steadily back at her, full of relief despite the tip of the arrow pointed at his neck.

“You aren’t wearing a mask.” Mia said.

He pulled her into his arms, gripping tightly onto her. “You ok?”

Mia inhaled, then leaned on the cool pad of his shoulders.

Exhale. “Red Hood,”

“Roy’s on it,”

“They worked together before,” she mumbled.

“Roy said that,”

Mia allowed herself a few more seconds of comfort before pulling away, “We gotta find them,”

Conner hesitated, “Mia-“

Mia pleaded with her eyes, “It’s urgent, I will explain to you ok? Once things cool down,” _Trust me, trust me, trust_ -

And because he was a saint, Connor nodded, “Let’s go,”

* * *

Brick was not far from where they last met. In fact, Red Hood must have had him pinned in some sort of death trap, from what she gathered from the extensive blood splatters and wires. And were those red fragments helmet bits?

Well, had not been far.

Brick had made his escape amidst an intense scuffle between Red Hood and Arsenal.

“Hood!” Mia yelled, hoping it would distract him from his current brawl with Roy, “ where’s Brick!”

“Fucker let him get away!” Red Hood shouted back. There were bruises on his face and his nose was bleeding. Roy did not look good either, spitting blood on the ground while he tried to wrangle out of the chokehold.

Roy hissed, “Ex-Robin grew up to be quite a bitch!”

“Thought you would be used to Dick by now,” Red Hood snapped, then winced when Roy elbowed him in the thigh. Mia considered whether to intervene when Connor interjected in the comms, “found Brick. Grabbing him now,”

“I’m coming over,” she said, preparing her bow.

“Nah, he looks terrible so it should be easy. Go help Roy,”

Sighing, she signalled to Roy. _What we practised_.

Roy grunted, and twisted Red Hood’s arm to shove him away, at which point Mia released an arrow.

The arrogant shit caught the arrow, as planned. Which meant that the other arrow that Roy stabbed into Red Hood’s thigh in the millisecond of distraction could activate a short and precise electromagnetic pulse. At Hood’s strangled yell Arsenal pinned him onto the ground.

“This is highly unfair,” Red Hood huffed. Now that he was incapacitated, Mia could get a better look at his face. So that’s why he wore the helmet most of the time - without it he looked like a giant child.

“You don’t go terrorising our city without consequences, Hood. Which federal prison would you like?” Roy said as he cuffed Red Hood’s hands behind his back.

“Which one has your head on a pike?” Red Hood snarked.

“You-“

“Boys,” Mia snapped, “quieten down,” They obeyed, surprisingly.

Connor arrived then, dragging a bound and bloodied Brick over. “So,” Connor broke the silence, “who wants to explain this mess?”

* * *

 

“Mia,”

“Oliver.”

Mia could hear the pinch on the bridge of his nose through the phone. Good.

“Why is the Red Hood back in my city?”

“How the hell should I know,”

“You worked with him,” and then the more pointed, seething tone, “without telling anybody,”

“I have a plan and it’s gonna work. I will explain it to Connor and Roy later-“

“Well evidently, since Connor called me about it,”

“Well,” she said indignantly, edged on by the stab of betrayal in her heart, “you can ask him about it later then,”

“You better not use that tone with-“

She hung up. The phone did not ring; instead, an ominous message from Oliver was on its screen: i’m flying back. better be ready

Fuck. She unlocked her phone and tapped the message: pls dont come back yet

The second after she pressed send, her phone rang.

“Young lady,” Dinah said, “you better explain yourself,”

“Help buy me time. I swear to god I can handle this, and I will even let you psycho analyse me later, I can get Red Hood and his drama out of Star City, but Oliver cannot come back now.”

“There’s something else there,” Dinah pointed out.

“I’m not dating the goddamn Red Hood,”

“I wasn’t thinking that, but Oliver did. He was gonna beat him up to teach you a lesson about messing with bad boys,”

“Christ,” Dinah snorted, before continuing seriously, “We’ll talk about all this later okay, and swear to me, you will stay safe,”

“Ok,” Mia said, trying to stop herself from gushing, “I love you,”

“I love you too sweetheart,”

* * *

 

Mia had intended to push the door open with a dramatic entrance when she overheard the conversation inside. She looked through the gap where the door was ajar, to find Roy crouching next to Red Hood.

“For what it’s worth,” Roy said, “I’m sorry,”

Red Hood shot him with a baffled stare. After that little escape stint while they were transferring him here, Roy went a little crazy with the chains. Now he was helmet-less, bound to the ground and looking like a real boy.

“Titans. Joker. Nightwing. Batman. I wish i could say it was a wrong place wrong time deal for you, but it lets the rest of us get away with our mistakes, yea?”

“I-“ Red Hood’s hand tightened into a fist, “you don’t know what you are talking about,”

“Maybe. But I knew a kid who tried his best even when the adults should have been handling it. And you got let down by every one of us. And I, I know how that feels,”

“You don’t,” he snapped on reflex, then turned his face away. Roy caught that discomfort and chose not to point it out.

“I don’t, not fully, but I have had my fair share of shit. That little empathy won’t be enough for you, but I will tell you this - you deserve better,” 

"It’s a bit too late for that,” Red Hood grit his teeth.

“Can’t really help you with that but, if you want someone to talk to, we are here. And when you get better you can meet my daughter.”

His eyes widened, childlike for once, “Oh, Cheshire?”

Roy laughed, “She’s not really in the picture right now, but yea, Lian’s about,” he placed his hand slightly above his head, “yea-high,”

“Huh,” then soft eyes hardened into a flinty pair, “I hope she never meets me,”

Roy sighed. Mia's cue to let herself into the room.

“What did Oliver say?” Roy asked.

“He said: listen to Mia,”

Roy pinched the bridge of his noise, “Girl-“

“I’m serious!” she protested, “fine, it was Dinah who gave the okay. You can go check with them if it makes you feel better,”

“Nah,” Roy waved his hand, and Mia felt a rush of relief in her heart, “I trust you. I will find Connor to iron out the deets,”

When Roy finally left Red Hood leered. “I told your brothers,” he drawled, as if he was in a coffee shop waiting for his day to pass, “that this is an overkill,”

“Red- can I call you Jason?”

“We are on first name basis now?”

“Red Hood’s a bit annoying to refer to you. But quit the chatting. You interested in what I have to say?”

“Well Mia,” Jason leaned in with a mildly crazed grin, eyes glowing green and wide, “tell me,”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might only beta after exams gg this is a really short chapter but the next one is more substantive(?)  
> Sorry for the really late update I... actually forgot about this work  
> Don't go to law school guys
> 
> (the jason lives and is a law student au is kinda funny to me rn)


End file.
